Giving ‘home’ something real

Matt Pearl

Last week, our paper covered a local meeting that had been held at the Tri-County Alternative Energy Education and Visitors Center in King City.

My first remark is that the facility is ideal for such a gathering, and would be a fine choice of venue for any conference or gathering, professional or private.

Two men I have come to know fairly well, Andrew McCrea and Jon Doolittle, were the chief speakers at the event. The lecture itself focused on the advantages to making use of community foundations for the accumulation of funding for community-centered projects and needs.

But what I took home from the conference was perhaps a more generalized message, one voiced by Community Foundation of Northwest Missouri representative Mary Hinde — a general mark on the place of rural philanthropy.

Ms. Hinde voiced the idea that, if we are to live, work, prosper and raise a family in a community, it is incumbent upon us to make sure that community possesses the tools to build its future.

Small-town atrophy, you see, should not be a foregone conclusion. But it has been the trend in our northwest Missouri rural communities, because people follow jobs and opportunities.

If you can look at your small town and see a place that holds considerably fewer professional and residential offerings to its citizens than it did 40 years ago, you know exactly what I mean.

My hunch is that this problem used to contain its own solution: that the apprenticeship/father-son employment models of the past kept small towns thriving. Leaving to head to the big town becomes less of a viable option when you own a business and property in a small community.

Basically, when you become vested in a community, you find yourself less likely to leave it. When you stay, your money stays with you. When people’s money remains in a community, the community has more resources to offer more goods and services. I’m just a lowly English teacher, but these are not difficult economics to comprehend.

Conversely, when folks pick up and leave, they take their future, their family and their wealth with them.

What can we do? If the job is in St. Joe, I can understand why a person doesn’t want a half-hour commute, can’t you? We can’t force people to stay.

But forcing an issue has never really worked. I learned a long time ago that people do what they want to do, so the solution is simple: we as a community must look toward what we want for the future of our small towns, and then sell that same vision to the faithful members of our communities.

When folks invest themselves in an idea, their resolve tends to be strong. If a few hundred people in the small towns in our area would do two simple things, we would leave communities that would thrive 40 years from now. Those steps are simple:

The first: Shop locally. Keep your wealth at home while you are living.

The second: Consider leaving a gift or endowment for your community, and keep a fraction of your wealth at home after you are gone.

There is no gimmick here. St. Joe is a larger community because there are more people, more opportunities and more wealth. If you want to see your small town grow (or at least stop shrinking), seek out ways to keep your resources here.